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New here

Hello, new member here. Not much of a lurker before, but this website has popped up for me quite a few times in the past on google searches about specific knife info. It seems like a really knowledgeable group here and I look forward to learning tons here.

I'm a chef of 15 years here. I've worked in all kinds of restaurants, fast food to diners to institutions to french to italian to country clubs and public golf courses. Recently, I owned a Peruvian food truck that was very successful but short lived.

I've just barely got into japanese chef's knives: I've been bitten by a bug.

My first Jknife was a Fujiwara Kanefusa 270mm Suji
I now own 3 more and the list is not going to stop growing it looks like.
Sakai Takayuki hammered damascus Nakiri in 165mm is my second knife I got a christmas gift from my wife
Sakai Takayuki Grand Chef 240mm Wa-Gyuto is my main knife now. Love the AEB-L!
Now, recently, I bought my first carbon knife, and now there's no going back.
Tojiro ITK santoku (I know it's a girls knife! My wife wanted me to buy a santoku) in white #2. Now, the santoku I've turned into a "project knife". As you all may know, these come pretty rough from the factory so I rounded and polished the spine. I sanded the handle down to be even with the ferrule and I smoothed it and coated it with spar urethane. I filled in the gap where the tang inserts into the handle with epoxy resin. I stripped the korouchi finish. I ground down the back side so it's now a chisel grind instead of a messed up v grind. Then I forced a patina, which turned out really nice for my first time. It's got that great phosphorescent blue, purple going on. So, I love this knife now. And I really enjoyed "fixing" this knife. I may buy a few more from this line just to play with them and resell.

I also bought my first japanese waterstone a few months ago. An Arashiyama 6000. Love this stone! I've just been using a DMT 1200/600 for the lower grits, which has worked fine for me because I'm careful. But... I'm looking to buy a few more lower grit stones to replace that. I'm also stropping on split leather loaded with chromium oxide. Looking into alternatives to this too. But, with my sharpening/stropping system, I get excellent results. All my knifes do the "not touching the tomato trick" very easily. I've been a great sharpener since I was a kid playing with pocket knives, so there wasn't much of a learning curve getting into this new stuff.